As the size of mobile computer system touchscreens increases, single-handed operation of these devices becomes increasingly difficult. For example, a large screen smartphone, as shown in FIG. 1, such as, for example, an LG G3 Android, a Samsung Galaxy S5, an HTC One Max Android, an Apple iPhone 6 Plus, etc., may include a touchscreen 2 having a height of about 5 inches and a width of about 3 inches. As depicted in FIG. 1, grasping a large screen smartphone 1 in the right hand (only) allows an average user's thumb 5 a range of motion that provides access to the home button 3, and a pie-shaped region of touchscreen 2 generally prescribed by semicircular arc 4, the bottom of touchscreen 2 and a portion of the right side of touchscreen 2. Users with bigger hands and longer thumbs will be able to access a larger region of touchscreen 2, while users with smaller hands and shorter thumbs will be able to access a smaller region of touchscreen 2. Unfortunately, selectable elements of the graphical user interface for an application executing in the foreground, such as, for example, icons in a home screen, graphical control elements in a browser application, etc., that are displayed within the upper portion 6 of touchscreen 2 are unreachable using the thumb 5 and a one-handed grasp.
Attempts to mitigate the difficulties associated with one-handed operation of large screen smartphones have been made by several smartphone manufacturers. In one attempt, the user can switch smartphone 1 into a small screen mode, which shrinks the graphical user interface to a smaller size for display in a lower portion of touchscreen 2. Shrinking the size of the graphical user interface to allow the user to access all of the elements generally defeats the purpose of having a large touchscreen in the first place, and may render certain elements of the graphical user interface too small to select with thumb 5, too small to read, etc. In another attempt, the user can activate a reachability mode which slides the upper portion of the graphical user interface down to the lower portion of touchscreen 2, while removing the lower portion of the graphical user interface entirely from touchscreen 2. Once reachability mode is activated, only the elements of the graphical user interface that are visible in the lower portion of touchscreen 2 may be selected by the user, which may render certain gestures impossible to perform, etc.